


Oh baby

by NotASpaceAlien



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 05:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16886652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotASpaceAlien/pseuds/NotASpaceAlien
Summary: Crowley walks away from being summoned with a bit more than he bargained for.





	Oh baby

**Author's Note:**

> I was going through some of my older writing and came across this old ficlet on tumblr that never made it over to AO3 so I'm posting it now! I hope you enjoy!
> 
> On tumblr at http://not-a-space-alien.tumblr.com/post/127751301520/have-you-done-this-one-crowley-and-aziraphale

 

_Thank you for being a friend.  Travel down the road and back again.  Your heart is true, you’re a pal and a confidaaaaaant….”_

When the notes of the opening theme to _The Golden Girls_ began to get drowned out by a strange voice, Crowley roused himself from his TV-marathon induced stupor and blinked in alarm.  “What the…?”

It was not Hell communicating with him; it was a voice from faraway, growing steadily louder and faster, chanting in…

_Oh no._  He realized what it was.  A human was Summoning him.

Crowley never liked being Summoned.  It always came at the rudest time*, and the humans who called him, usually Satanists, were simply dreadful.  The nice people who happened to be Satanists were never the ones trying to summon the fabled Serpent of Eden.  It was always the Satanists that made Crowley squirm, because they were the only ones who really had use for demons.  None of the kind, chattering nuns were ever on the other end of the line when he heard that chant.

* * *

*such as during his well-earned _Golden Girls_ marathon.

* * *

Since Crowley disliked them so much, he had made efforts to remove all the summoning spells that could be used to call him up from spell tomes and materials that circulated among Satanists.  He had been quite successful.  In fact, he had not been Summoned since the late fifteenth century.  He had destroyed all records of every spell that could Summon him.  He had, except….

Except for that one which he had lost track of and had never been able to find again.  Crowley’s eyes widened in panic as he remembered the ritual in particular.  To use that spell required–

He suddenly felt himself yanked out of three-dimensional space and spat back out somewhere else, and his feet planted in something dreadful.

“It worked!” said a voice.

Vomiting was a rare sensation to Crowley, but the combination of motion sickness from being jerked around like that and the sight of all that gore was enough to do it.  It was just as unpleasant as he remembered it being the last time it happened in the 1400s.

“Are you the Serpent?” said a voice, a bit unsurely.

Crowley wiped his mouth and straightened up.  There was a group of people in robes, half hidden in the darkened room, flames from candles casting strangely shaped shadows around them.

“You didn’t.  You _didn’t_ ,” said Crowley.

The robed figures looked at each other nervously, then back at Crowley.  “You _are_ the Serpent, aren’t you?”

Crowley felt his eyes burning as he looked at them.  “Yesssssss.”

“We have something to ask of you.  We have an appropriate sacrifice.”

As if on cue, a high-pitched, tiny cry pierced the darkness.

* * *

Crowley never asked Aziraphale to come over to his flat.  Crowley came into Aziraphale’s shop to bother him, or they met at a restaurant, or, rarely, Crowley would _tempt_ Aziraphale into his flat.  But he would not _ask_ Aziraphale to come to his flat.

Crowley had asked Aziraphale to come to his flat, and had not even offered to come pick him up.  Aziraphale had called a cab.  And now he was outside Crowley’s door, afraid to knock because of what he might find inside, when he heard the thin wail of an infant from behind the door.

He broke it down without a second thought, charging into the flat as though into battle.

Crowley was there, looking battered and bewildered, in his pajamas, and holding a sack of potatoes that looked like a small human being in his arms.  The potatoes were crying.

“Crowley!” said Aziraphale.  “What the–Whose child is that?!”

“I don’t know!” wailed the demon over the baby.

“What did you _do?_ ” said Aziraphale, his face twisting into a stormy expression.

“ _I_ didn’t do anything!” snarled Crowley.  The baby began to cry more loudly.

Aziraphale walked over and pried the baby out of Crowley’s hands before the demon could say anything.  The angel started cooing to it to try and quiet it, but the baby took no notice, fat tears continuing to cascade down its face.

“You have some explaining to do,” said Aziraphale testily.

Crowley sat on the couch and wrapped his arms around himself.  “Satanists,” he said tightly.  “They summoned me using a ritual that…”

When he trailed off, Aziraphale prompted, “Yes?”

“Requires spilling the blood of two members of a consummated marriage and presenting their infant as a sacrifice when the demon appears in the summoning circle.”

Aziraphale just stared at him.  Crowley returned his gaze miserably; he was perhaps wondering if there was a way for the angel to somehow blame him for this.

“They wanted me to _eat_ it,” said Crowley after a moment.  He looked offended.

“What did you do?” said Aziraphale.

“Just what I said.  Nothing.  They weren’t too pleased about that.”

“Ah.  And you took the baby and…”

“Walked out.  I’m sure they wouldn’t be too pleased with that, either, if they could remember what happened.”

“ _What_ did you do them?”

Crowley looked uncomfortable here.  “They might be showing up in the hospital soon.”

Aziraphale shook himself.  “We have to find the child’s family!”

“Its parents are dead!”

“Surely there must be extended family?”

“Right.  Ahm…”

“We have to go to the police.”

“And say what? ‘Hello, I have the missing baby, I got it off some Satanists who summoned me’?”

“We could hypnotize them.  We’ve done it before.”

“Would that violate Adam’s….err, _suggestion_ that we not ‘mess about’ with people anymore?”

They both hesitated, the only sound the baby’s continued crying.  Neither of them were quite sure what Adam had meant when they had last talked, but they were both very keen not to get on his bad side after seeing what he was capable of.

“Surely he’d understand,” said Crowley, but he did not sound convinced.

“You didn’t hear from him after what you did to the Satanists…?”

Crowley balled his fists.  “I–erm–well I did that with my bare hands, actually.”

Before Aziraphale could comment, Crowley rushed forwards, “Angel, you have to take it.”

“Me?!”

“You’re the nice one, remember?”

“Crowley, you’re the one who played the nanny to young Warlock.  I think you’re more qualified to take care of it until we can sort this out.”

“That was different.  Warlock wasn’t a human baby, he was the Antichrist.”

Aziraphale bounced the baby, who had finally gone quiet.  “He wasn’t, if you’ll recall.  You spent all those years successfully raising a normal human boy.”

“You’d leave a human baby with a _demon_.”

“One who is insulted by the suggestion that he would hurt a child.”

Crowley put his head in his hands.  Last time he had been handed a baby, it almost had ended extremely badly.  It would have, except for people more competent than him not buggering everything up.  This was too much.

He walked past Aziraphale and the baby and opened his liquor cabinet.

He noted with interest that a tartan bassinet had appeared in his living room, and wondered if he were perhaps already drunk.  Aziraphale cooed to the baby as he gently set it down, then turned to face Crowley.  “All right, I’ll help you with this.”

Crowley didn’t reply as he was in the process of downing half a bottle of wine.

* * *

Aziraphale woke the next morning to the sound of crying, which was far louder than it should have been, and realized that he had let himself get a hangover.

_Good Heavens._  He had actually gotten drunk?  He was supposed to be the responsible one.

Aziraphale levered himself up off the couch and jabbed Crowley, who was passed out on the floor, with his foot.  “Crowley.  Crowley, wake up.  Crowley!”

“Erm?” said the demon, looking up, and then he snapped to attention and flung himself upright.  “Ahh!  I forgot about Baby!  She must be hungry!”

“How old is she?” said Aziraphale, peering into the bassinet.  “I suspect she might need breastfed?”

“They make formula for that, now,” said Crowley, ruffling his hair into shape, although privately he thought giving himself breasts for the job might be a fun change.

A few minutes later, and with Baby still crying but now strapped into a sling on Crowley’s chest, they arrived at the grocery store.  Crowley had forgotten a lot of what he learned from nannying Warlock, and Aziraphale had never known any of such information at all, so they dithered and argued in the aisle over what food would be the best.  A woman with her own baby came over and helped them, and then remarked what a cute couple the two of them were.  Crowley smiled and politely explained to her that he already knew that.

Later back in the flat, they were both watching Baby, making sure she was eating the formula.  She was.

“This is making me hungry,” said Crowley, watching Baby suck it down greedily.

“You don’t need to _be_ hungry,” said Aziraphale.

“You’re right.  We should do the Ritz.”

“That’s not quite what I…”

Normally the Ritz is not what people think of as a family-oriented restaurant, but they strong-armed their way into having a meal with a highchair on the side of their usual table.  Baby clapped her hands and giggled, her toothless mouth fixed in a smile and her wide, watery eyes looking around in fascination at the colors and shapes and movement.  Crowley unsuccessfully tried to convince Aziraphale she would enjoy one baby-sized sip of wine and such a thing wouldn’t hurt anything.

It was late when they got back, and Crowley was much too drunk to unhook the sling or put Baby in the bassinet, so Aziraphale did it before passing out as well.

“We can’t keep her,” said Aziraphale the next morning, attempting to wish away his hangover in the midst of the crying.

“I know,” said Crowley, who was obviously trying to accomplish the same thing.

They made some calls and managed to discover that the mother and father had been a runaway kicked out and estranged from their family, which had not been in contact for years, and someone with no living relatives, respectively.

“Sussspect that’s why they were picked,” said Crowley.

“ _What_  are we going to do?” said Aziraphale.  “I mean, I don’t think _we_ ….”

Crowley sighed.  “I guess there are worse parents you could be raised by?”

Baby was looking at them, gurgling and smiling, her onesie filthy with formula she had spilled on herself.

“It wouldn’t be right,” said Crowley.

They looked at each other doubtfully.

* * *

A few days later, a teenage girl named Haley received £50 for a babysitting job.  The father (Tony, his name was), asked if he could bring the baby over to _her_  place instead of having her come over to his.  She agreed, and he placed a stack of crisp notes in her hand, thought for a moment, then placed a tip on top of that.  He then admonished her to take very good care of the baby.  She felt vaguely alarmed by the transaction, but couldn’t place why.

The baby slept most of the time.  When it came time for Tony to come back and get her, Haley waited by the door anxiously for him.  After two hours, she called his number, which was the only contact information she had been given, only to find it was the phone of the pizza parlor down the street.  She dithered for a very long time, having never dealt with a situation like this before.

Eventually, she called the police, who immediately placed it as the missing baby.  They grilled Haley about where she had gotten it, but her alibi checked out (she had been at her job at the convenience store at the time), and no one could track down this Tony person.

The baby found its way into foster care and, eventually, somehow ended up being adopted by a rich couple, neither of whom were Satanists or any sort of supernatural being or tried to offer it wine.


End file.
